How Often Should You Pulse? Cadence Without Survey Fatigue
The programme runs a monthly readiness pulse. Eleven months in, the scores have moved by less than half a point in any direction, response rates have fallen from 61 per cent to 29, and the monthly slide has become something people scroll past. The usual diagnosis is survey fatigue, and the usual remedy is to […]
Read articleAnonymity, Trust and Response Rates in Readiness Surveys
The readiness survey promises anonymity. It also asks for function, location, role level and team, because the programme needs to know where the risk sits. In a team of six, those four fields identify everyone. The respondents work this out considerably faster than the programme does, and they answer accordingly. Anonymous and confidential are not […]
Read articleSurvey Question Wording: Why Small Changes Break Your Data
Two readiness surveys go out in the same week to comparable populations. One asks whether people agree that they are “well prepared for the upcoming changes”. The other asks whether they have “completed the new process end to end without help”. The first comes back at 71 per cent. The second comes back at 24 […]
Read articleHow to Design a Change Readiness Survey That Isn’t Ignored
Most change readiness surveys are written the same way. Someone opens a document, lists the things that feel important, turns each into a statement, adds a five-point agreement scale, and sends it out. Forty-two questions, three weeks before go-live. The result is usually a set of numbers in the high threes that nobody can act […]
Read articleWhy Change Maturity Models Rarely Change Anything
The change maturity assessment came back at 2.4. The improvement plan, unsurprisingly, is to reach 3.0 within eighteen months, and there are now workstreams for each dimension that scored below the target. Eighteen months later the organisation will very likely be at 3.0, because organisations that set out to reach a maturity level generally reach […]
Read articleProsci vs Kotter vs Agile Change: Choosing an Approach
The framework selection meeting is a recognisable event. Someone has a preference from a previous employer, someone else has a certification, and a decision gets made that will shape how the next two years of change work is described. It matters less than the meeting implies. The evidence base does not support a strong claim […]
Read articleLewin’s Change Model Is 80 Years Old. What Still Holds?
Unfreeze, change, refreeze. It is the first thing most people are taught about organisational change, it is attributed to Kurt Lewin, and it appears on more slides than any other idea in the field. There is a problem with it, and it is not the usual complaint that organisations never refreeze. Lewin does not appear […]
Read articleKotter’s 8 Steps: What Survives Contact With an ERP Programme
A large ERP programme sets up its change plan as eight workstreams, named after Kotter’s eight steps. There is a urgency workstream, a coalition workstream, a vision workstream. By month four, three of them have quietly stopped meeting, because they were never activities. Kotter’s steps describe conditions an organisation reaches, not tasks a team performs, […]
Read articleADKAR Explained — and Where It Runs Out
ADKAR is the most widely used change model in corporate practice, and most of the criticism aimed at it is unfair. It is clear, it is teachable in an hour, and it directs attention at individuals rather than at programme artefacts — which is more than can be said for most of what it competes […]
Read articleCRM and ERP Rollouts Need Different Change Approaches
The change plan for the CRM rollout was adapted from the ERP programme two years earlier. Impact assessment, stakeholder map, comms calendar, training curriculum, super users, go-live gate, four weeks of hypercare, project closure. It is a competent plan and most of it is reusable. But it was built around an assumption that does not […]
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